This week, the body of Jessica Lloyd, 27, was found just off Cary Rd., east of town.

Now the whole world is talking about Tweed.

Still, it took area police four months to warn women or connect the dots of Lloyd's disappearance and murder with that of Cpl. Marie Comeau, 43, found dead in her Brighton home in November, and the sexual assault of two other women in Tweed last September.

Those two Tweed women were attacked in their homes, when a man broke in at night, covered their faces, bound them to chairs and took photographs.

In the first case, on Sept. 17, the victim was a young single mother with an infant. Dead of night. All alone. Her newborn a few feet away. She was terrorized for hours.

When he finally left, the attacker made off with her underwear and, inexplicably, a baby blanket.

According to Tweed resident Larry Jones, 62, who lives next door to Col. Russell Williams, 46, now charged with two murders and the two sexual assaults, the police did not believe that first victim when she reported the attack.

Not until the second victim was attacked two weeks later.

"They said her boyfriend had broken into her house, to try to get back at her for leaving him or something,'' he told me Tuesday. "So two weeks went by. Not a word was said. Nothing in the media. Nothing in the news. And we had an animal running around.

"Then, (Victim B) down the road from me, she gets broken into and it's the same crime. They should have put the word out. They could have been looking for somebody.''

Instead, police came looking for Jones who, on Oct. 29, found his house surrounded by cruisers.

He was subsequently released.

Did police not believe Victim A?

She isn't talking, despite my repeated attempts to reach her.

And when asked whether police believed the first victim or not, OPP spokesperson Sgt. Kristine Rae, to whom I was referred after I phoned the local Hastings detachment, was non-specific.

"I don't have any answers at the moment," she said the first time we spoke yesterday. "There was an investigation reported after the first incident,'' she said during my second call. What is clear is that no police warning went out until Sept. 30, after the second attack, which occurred several hundred yards from the first incident.

To the OPP's credit, that alert, unlike so many others warning women to be afraid – as if we aren't already – was very detailed:

"On September 17 and again on September 30, 2009, both in the early hours of the morning, an unknown male entered Tweed residences. During both separate incidents, the suspect struck the female victim, tied her to a chair and took photos of her. The suspect then fled the scene."

And then, the inevitable: "The OPP want to remind everyone to ensure all doors and windows are secured and to practice personal safety."

And what are women supposed to do with that?

Almost two months went by. Comeau was killed.

But the next police warning did not come until Feb. 3, after Lloyd disappeared.

As Belleville Police Chief Cory McMullan read to me over the phone, that alert said that there was "a safety concern for women living alone.''

Isn't there always?

The warning urged women living alone to change their routines and to take "extra precautions.''

Not much help, says Jane Doe, the Toronto woman who successfully sued police after she was attacked by "The Balcony Rapist.'' Despite her attacker's repeated assaults, police never warned women of his preying on women in the neighbourhood.

She says non-specific alerts are no help.

"Women require information that helps them make informed decisions on how to live their lives,'' she told me yesterday. "The bottom line is, these are not effective. Men who commit sexual assault are caught through community response. That's certainly what happened in my case.''

Maybe, after Comeau was killed in November, if area police had issued a specific warning to women – maybe something like there may be a guy running around breaking into houses at night, preying on women living alone, up and down Highway 37 – Lloyd would still be alive.

Maybe, the way they talk in a community like Tweed, it would have made all the difference.

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